To Catch a Cold
by Mistlan
Summary: Aya catches a cold, Curiosity breaks the Spaceship. One Red Lantern starts to figure out how he fits in with the crew.


**To Catch a Cold**

**Summary: Aya catches a cold, Curiosity breaks the Spaceship. One Red Lantern starts to figure out how he fits in with the crew.**

**Fandom: Green Lantern: The Animated Series**

**Characters/Pairings: Kilowog, Hal, Light Razer+Aya with past Ilana+Razer, **

**Warnings? We find out what color Razer's cheeks turn due to a repeated innuendo.**

**Inspiration? Aya becomes corrupt with a virus and attempts to burn down Razer's quarters. A writing prompt done by the writer TheHypothesisofSouls in her fiction piece Razaya Writing Prompts.  
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**Embedded Link should be here I hope, s/9835500/1/Razaya-Writing-Prompts **

**Author's Note: This is a oneshot. I'm experimenting with story ideas and these kind of characters are new to work with.**

**Disclaimer: No harm was intended. Rights belong to their respective owners. This is a piece of fiction.**

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It was lying in a cylindrical woven wire container among refuse and rotting organic sustenance. The shiny flat disk was ripe for the taking. The little green skinned woman didn't know why it was untouched. A little sticky, the processor melted to smithereens. After all she had a point five imperfection she kept shuffling around her programming. Something that was nice and uniform with little to no error, much like her.

A cute short green figure clasped in white. Thigh high boot components offset by thick lower forearm components. Bottoms and a tank top clothing a compact bikini bod. She cocked her helmeted heart shaped face. Blue eyes calculating quickly what kind of data could be a perfectly good disk thrown in the trash.

. . . seventy five percent chance no one was looking.

The rustling of papers caught the ears of one unfortunate enough to catch her. A sharp yell had her jumping to high heavens. In a brave attempt to hide her little flaw she nabbed the disk along with armfuls of goods not noticing what she was grabbing. She whirled to face the person in question. A deer in the headlights look plastered across her face only to run into the yeller in question.

Razer is a Red Lantern, months fresh from boot camp and a pessimist out of his element according to her databanks. The widower pretended not to be a part of the group, hanging on the edges of this motley crew. Confusion swept his striped ivory face. The red and black armor creaked uncomfortably too loud in the pregnant pause. Aya did not know what she had grabbed. For her first shopping trip outside of the Interceptor Aya looked much too like the caught little troublemaker and less like the computer who kept pestering him with questions all hours of the night.

Aya looked both ways quickly. Her vital signs twirled in her chest. Heat rushed into her cheeks. Quick, she grabbed another item while dropping several more.

Razer could only stop and stare.

"Aya?" Razer asked. The computer's much too human face whirred slowly enough he could hear the gears helping her neck swivel her head.

"Yes?" she blurted, "Red Lantern Razer I have come across more items I wish to analyze in detail."

A half-truth wouldn't hurt Aya decided. She was going to put everything else back and study only the disk. Poor Razer only saw the items in her arms. His brain ran on fumes. The last time he'd seen those was during his wedding reception. Ilana was blushing like mad when she held what Aya innocently bundled in her arms. Embarrassing memories swam to the surface.

"Those are . . . toys . . ." Razer exclaimed slowly, oh yes his face was the picture of peaceful. He was gasping with horror on the inside.

"What kind of toys?" the computer asked head cocked sideways, "I require more information."

"Adult toys . . . which . . . do adult things . . ." Razer sighed; his eyes couldn't quite meet her gaze, ". . . In private."

"Do you wish to analyze these adult toys with me in private Red Lantern Razer?" Aya spoke.

He stormed away quickly. Cheeks darkened from circulation rushing to all the wrong places. Aya meanwhile set the adult toys down and pocketed the data disk she fished from the trash. Its files could prove much more interesting. Aya did not know why such toys would prove amusing. A vibrating microphone? A magazine with recreational art? She did not see why anyone would use such alien devices.

A few days later after just dumping the data into her hard drive without scanning it first. Aya sat at the console. Her processer drummed painfully against her head. Body parts that usually moved with no problem ached to fall off their own joints, limp from muscular soreness. Something gunk-like and runny dripped from her nose. She sniffled loudly but this gunk started running the opposite direction past her larynx. The sniffling caught the attention of the other two beings on crew.

Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and Kilowog leaned forward towards the noise. Kilowog a seven foot tall giant among the crew, his enormous hand engulfed her shoulder as she looked to see into his red bulldog like face. Her headache swam in her temporal lobes.

"Aya," Kilowog inquired, "Are you okay kid?"

Aya forced her head to nod but that nod sent the gunk to her nose. An itch triggered an impulse she plugged her nose to try and stop. She gasped in air once but none came in. She breathed in more. The Interceptor lurched as her chest heaved. She ran wobbly from the room.

"Wait Aya," Hal began. The brunette, wide shouldered human stood to go after her.

WAH-CHOO

KA-BOOM!

The Ship flipped. Crew members bounced off ceilings and walls. Kilowog's girth knocked the wind from Razer's chest. Hal hovered above the pilot's seat. The Interceptor swung around causing Razer to get rolled over a second time. Once the world stopped spinning, smoke could be smelt from one side of the ship. The engine room blew and only one other lantern was left without a bed for a while.

Razer growled, angry at what had trashed his quarters. He felt rage at the computer but when he went to go voice his frustrations. Something big smashed him to the floor. Kilowog shook the cobwebs from his face. He barely noticed what had cushioned his fall.

Kilowog pulled himself into a sitting position. His heavy hip grinded into the small of Razer's back. Razer scowled at nothing in particular. His head cushioned on one propped up hand. His fingers drummed on the floor. Kilowog looked down and noticed his cushion start to growl.

"Uh whoops," Kilowog grunted as he stood, "Sorry."

Razer stomped out ignoring everyone else altogether. Meanwhile Kilowog rolled his eyes. He pantomimed a display he'd wished the Red Lantern would perform more often. As of yet getting him to play nice took pulling teeth.

"Oh sure Kilowog, I accept your apology," Kilowog grumbled and later added, "Poozer."

Hal ran worriedly to where Aya last disappeared. Kilowog meanwhile stood back to observe what was going on in front of him. Poor Aya looked miserable, curled up in a corner. Razer slowed in his haste to gently get the AI's attention. The tear streaked face Aya looked up with was simply heart breaking. Ugly little sniffles adding to the forlorn little face. Meanwhile a nervous look crossed Aya's vision.

She couldn't hear everything on the ship anymore. Her little AI cylinder in Kilowog's large hand, she made to protest but her throat felt scratchy. Sore even with the gunk enflaming it when she swallowed.

"Please no," she croaked out, surprised to find the pain even worse. She didn't want to be disconnected to the ship. She felt too unprotected. "Don't"

"Kilowog what are you doing?" Hal stated, "It's only a cold."

"I don't know how she got sick," Kilowog informed him, being the voice of reason on the ship wasn't easy, Razer could only look down in confusion, "But she's a sick _A.I._ Hal and as a sick computer I need to treat no different than any other sick recruit. Aya you're on sick leave end of discussion."

"But I am vitally needed in running the Interceptor," Aya choked out, her chest rattled and heaved.

"All the more reason you can't work when extremely ill," Hal stated, "Kilowog is right Aya. You need rest, plenty of fluids, uh, I don't know what kind of over the counter cold medicine is used for computers. I think I have Norton antivirus on my cell phone somewhere."

Razer growled as he stormed forward. His face inches from Hal's face.

"This is Aya!" Razer stated, "We can't just give her food and get on with it."

"Good point, Razer Aya can have your room. The damage is not as bad as it looks. Kilowog you get to babysit. Me? I'm flying the ship," Hal stated.

"But!" Razer began.

"Someone is sick and either you be considerate or you stay out of the way." Hal stated, Razer was ready to yell into another tirade, "Ah! What did I tell you about Pessimists?"

Razer paced around the med bay where sick people were _supposed_ to be. He busied himself about the ship trying not to think about the newest development to Aya's mysterious new cold. A cute sneeze following a quaking boom, he squint his eyes shut to force back a whimper. Kilowog personally found it almost heartbreaking and Hal made some kind of Robocop reference. Aya's sneeze in the background caused several instruments to fluctuate. Razer hated these living arrangements, he wanted his room back and he wanted the power flares to stop.

So caught up as he was in his pacing he never noticed the small object crushed beneath his foot. He stopped upon the crunch and moved his foot to see a disposable data disk. It wasn't even a very good one. The adult toy shop sold them as one time fits fun packages where as soon as the let's just say adult things are done in private than the file gets thrown away. Corrupt data did tend to give birth to computer viruses Razer remembered. He didn't like the adult toys much as he had a dislike for everything in general.

'_She had this in her arms at the store,'_ Razer thought to himself, _'But if this is what made her sick?'_

Razer shuddered to think of the content on the Adult Toy Disk. Razer crept up to the door knocking quietly. The door slid open before the third knock. Aya sat up curled in Razer's bed. Blanket discarded, yet she clutched her arms shivering as stray sweat drops dripped on her exposed skin. Something stirred in the Red Lantern's stone heart.

What was it though? He lost the ability to pity. Rage nearly burned through those. Sympathy or Empathy was kind of lost on him. Quintessentially being the less experienced, besides Aya, on a crew with two experienced Green Lanterns, all three each from a different planet, and not much in common save for a colorful piece of jewelry and a means to an end.

'_What use am I?' _Razer thought to himself angrily, Feet wondering through the food storage area, he opened each one cupboard by cupboard. Simulated ingredients staring him back in the face, _'I'm not a Green Lantern. I don't know who I'm fighting for!'_

His shoulders scrunched under the invisible burden. Razer had many things that once kept him grounded. A wife, a loving clan, and a normal mundane existence before Volkreg was whittled away by war. He had a wife, was still loyal her even after death did them part. Aya looked too familiar, hauntingly similar to the woman he married. This thought had him going straight to the poultry soup he used to heat when Ilana was ill. He put the can on the shelf and stared at it.

'_Aya is not Ilana or even organic,' _Razer thought sadly, _'What am I even thinking.'_

The can had gotten slammed undeservingly back on the shelf. The cupboard doors crashed close. He'd hurried to the copilot's seat on the Interceptor. Fingers idly tapped a couple buttons. When that didn't work fingernails pried into the edges of the console. Hal balked from the pilot's seat to the sound of plastic ripping and wires clattering together.

Razer tossed the ripped off console aside. Hal rushed to where Razer stood. Razer's frame angled over the ship's device. The Green Lantern snagged Razer by the shoulders ready to pull him off.

"Razer we do not have time for your games," Hal started.

Beep, beep, beep went the Interceptor's insides. The console lit up a small map of the ship. It spun slowly on its nose. The ship's problem areas lit up like a green blinking thumb. Hal paused in his daring attempt to rip the ex-saboteur off of the hardware. Eyes widened, transfixed by the spinning hologram. Razer being the closest was bathed in the glowing map's lime green glow.

"I'm not playing games. Aya's cold is messing with the automatic functions of the ship. I needed to access the map manually and taking off the covers is the only way to do it." Razer demanded.

Hal paused, a tinkle of revelation slowly dawned across his features. That revelation snidely tugging at the other corner of Hal's upturned lips.

"You do know you're basically undressing the Nav Com right?" Hal teased, "What a 3-D map of all those curves."

Razer buried his heavily blushing face into the entrails of the unfit console. If one were to ever witness a Volkreggian blush, popular pulp periodicals would've compared his cheeks to the hue of black cherry soda. Not that Razer needed a reminder of how ivory skin could darken instantly. Fingertips grasped the edges of the opening. Razer's head slowly rose to the tips of his ears. His glare wilting into smoldering Rath.

"Trust the captain to reach all the wrong conclusions," Razer scoffed, "If I hadn't had my hands busy I would have loved to give you applause."

"Why thank you Razer," Hal interrupted.

". . . With your head between my fists." Razer finished darkly.

Hal grumbled something about a certain Lantern needing to lighten up as he headed to bed with a yawn. With Aya holed up sick, the rest of the crew had to work in shifts just to keep the ship moving. Razer didn't see Kilowog stumble in. Yawning seemed quite contagious as he yawned behind the back of his fist himself. The only cure for a cold seemed to be fluids, rest, and medicine yet the Red Lantern wondered how much sleep anyone was even getting at all. If one part didn't work the rest tended to fail in their function. A team a metaphor to the parts of the body, Razer rubbed his eyes while pinching either side of his nose.

'_I'm not a scientist anymore,'_ he tried to coach himself, _'Repairing farm equipment with little to no available resources? Yes but even a shred of the man I used to be?'_

A sneeze followed the instruments fluctuating. The interceptor map blipped in and out revealing for an instant the body beneath the AI's covers but no joke a very detailed and elaborate X-ray. Razer choked on his own spit. So many gizmo and gadgets needed to produce the saline needed for shedding tears? Aya's version of simple made the task of clearing the virus daunting even aboard an already delicate piece of prototypical equipment.

'_That I most certainly am not,'_ Razer concluded.

The doors airlock hissed before it allowed itself to slide open. When Kilowog entered the room he was surprised to still feel the ship moving under his feet. Razer alarmingly laid asleep at the wheel. He carefully detached Razer from the pilot's console. When carefully pulled the chair back Razer's legs dragged behind him. Head lolled forward while his arms dangled upon either side similar to a puppet with cut strings.

"Hey Hal," Kilowog called out, unheeding the need to be quiet, Razer was not a light sleeper despite always sleeping with a knife under his pillow.

Hal however was a reluctant morning person. Taking the problem in stride he cracked open one eye and flipped over in his bed. A sneeze and the ship halted on its nose did send him sliding however. He rolled off the bed across the floor. His back collided with the wall. Once the ship righted itself Hal fell face first. His first thoughts once sleep fogged away were someone called him and Aya might've fallen out of bed.

Aya, when Hal went to check, turned out to be just fine. Strong fingers dented either side of the bed frame each time the sick AI sneezed. She curled up into a blanket cocoon wiping her nose. She stared at the shiny goop smeared across her finger. It would have been a fascinating sight if she didn't feel so crummy. Her head throbbed, her throat burned every time she swallowed a sniffle. Yes the observation would have been fascinating if she wasn't a part of the experience.

"Are you still okay Aya?" Hal asked quietly. Aya recounted in her databanks that asking a suffering person if one is okay after having sneezed her processors out while nausea flipped her innards during each time the Interceptor slammed on the breaks is actually very ignoramus of the person in question. Aya felt a trickle of sensation involving elevated rage hormones called frustration but she could not process the expression. Hal was being nice and concerned for his fellow life form, according to preprogrammed sequence, gratitude is supposed to be expressed.

Yet Aya was sick. Sickness caused a burning sensation. Hypothesis, it must be pain.

"I do not want to be in pain anymore," Aya concluded out loud, voice staticed and croaking.

Hal sighed, walking in to adjust the covers on his womanly charge. Curled up like this shaved years off her figure. The way she glanced upon him with wide glowing eyes. He could've swore he was talking to his niece not a childlike android in a woman's robot body.

"Please make it go away," she stated.

Hal let out a huffed breath. This was the reason why he wasn't big brother of the year. It was easy to get along with his little brother now but when it came to tough questions it was hard to broach the subject. Aya simply wasn't an organic being. Problems where being mildly sick were easy for a person to handle usually became more problematic for a computer to handle. That was what further reminded Hal that he was the man who crashed planes, not fix computers which Carol was better at even though it called for the IT guy.

"It's not," Hal coughed before he put his foot in his mouth, "Aya being sick is not easy. Some adults would love to be your position and have the opportunity to sleep a cold off but sometimes all we can do is take some cold medicine and move on. The world won't wait for us when we become sick."

"Then I want to get better now!" Aya demanded, squeaked delicately putting her hands to her lips.

"Please," she added politely.

Hal chuckled under his breathe explaining, "Razer is rubbing off on you. Try to still yourself and concentrate on getting better okay?"

She cuddled into the blanket until only a frightened pair of blue eyes peeped through. Part of her wanted to bury one's self in order to hide. Her curiosity however kept her processers active. She couldn't stop peeking out at the world. She waited to see what would happen next.

Hal made it to the ship in time to see Razer still passed out in the pilot's chair. A rock shoved on top of the break and a wrench jammed in the steering wheel. Hal noticed the ship finally stabilizing beneath his feet. The ship's holographic map indicating no problems yet Kilowog sat at a different table. A button pressed reviewing a screen of data scrolled above his ring.

"Morning sleeping beauty," Kilowog rumbled out.

Hal rubbed his eyes thinking his mind was playing tricks.

"The ship is running just fine for now," Kilowog stated, "I don't know how the kid did it but hey don't fix what isn't broken."

Hal pulled up an empty chair to sit beside Kilowog to get a closer look at the screen. Razer didn't quite budge. Kilowog scrolled the code again with his ring from the top. Hal couldn't read what half the letters said not that he paid attention to. Illegible handwriting was scrawled across the bottom.

"The Kid wrote here that he pulled up the antivirus for the ship in the Co-pilot's console." Kilowog repeated, when Hal narrowed his eyes to decipher the hand written note, "The cold is a peace of malware found in a computer virus. After duplicating the computer virus and putting into a potentially viable test subject."

Hal felt around his back pocket for his cellphone. He bit back a small litany of inappropriate language when he found the cell phone in the trash melted to smithereens. Funny it was in the same condition as the Adult Toy Disk next to it.

"He infected the ship with it," Kilowog added.

"Why that no good little weasel," Hal cursed.

"Now hold your horses High Ball, take a look at the coding," Kilowog insisted.

Hal called up the same data on his own ring but instead of code it brought up little white blobs. One single celluar brain, an amoebic construct Hal had only seen in science books on Earth. He looked closer at the alien yet familiar organic replicas. The Amoebas swam away from view.

"The ship's produced its own antibodies and Aya is technically apart of the ship right," Kilowog incited, "Introduce these new antibodies into Aya's old system."

"We finally have the cold medicine Aya needs!" Hal cheered, "Finally!"

Kilowog regarded the younger lantern quietly. Hal jubilantly pushed back in his chair willing up a construct floppy disk to feed into the hardware. Eager as he was he willed the construct closer. The floppy disk paused before the insertion point. Hal hadn't downloaded the antivirus yet. Half of his concentration was on Razer still konked out at the pilot's seat.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Kilowog piped up hoping the old Earth term would get Hal to talk.

Hal took longer than usual to start running his yap.

"He didn't wake any of us up while he was cooking up this cold medicine hadn't he?"

"Nope," Kilowog agreed.

"Why didn't he wake me up, I would have helped him," Hal insisted.

"Yup," Kilowog mumbled, continuing the job Hal forgot to finish.

The floppy disk was as easy to think up as a hammer. Kilowog inserted the construct in. Hal was busy waving a hand in front of the Red Lantern's face. His only received response was a soft snore. Razer's chest refilled with air and exhaled just as quietly so Hal guessed that's probably where the guy's lungs were. He didn't seem to have caught a cold from the strange device.

"You seem more excited about Aya feeling better than Razer does," Kilowog pointed out.

"I'm not good with kids Kilowog, I just got reminded today how much Aya is a kid herself," Hal explained.

"And Razer?" Kilowog exclaimed.

"I trust him," Hal shrugged nonchalantly.

"You afraid he'd do something to the kid?" Kilowog asked.

"Kilowog please," Hal scoffed, "Razer is grumpy, not a social butterfly, and don't get me started on his bedside manners."

Hal pointed the ring to engulf the chair. The constructed chair clone phased though it's original. Razer's body momentarily wobbled but remained upright. His legs dangled. Hal sauntered out of the room. His ring helped him walk the construct and its cargo to the nearest empty bed in med bay.

"First I didn't want anyone else getting sick just to be on the safe side," Hal kept chattering, "But c'mon Razer actually hurt anyone on the crew? He's too much of a softie."

"It's just a moot case," Kilowog shrugged.

Wakefulness seemed to mist through Razer's vision while his eyes fluttered open. The Red Lantern's first view was a lovely gray ceiling that curved into a spherical gray wall. He sat up slowly. Crackling popped in tiny bubbles along his spine. His face spurned at a particularly painful crick in his neck. His back elicited a protest for falling asleep at the steering wheel while waiting for the ship to do all the hard work. Pressure conformed along his torso. His brain registered the warm green shoulder beneath his chin. Not knowing where it camefrom, gloved fingers grasped the white shoulderguard. Arms looped around his neck.

"I am unsure what in my newly received data is considered appropriate or inappropriate," Aya started

There went Razer's cheeks to a dark cherry red again. He buried his head into Aya's chest to hide his blush. Wait! He was close to brushing against two very cup-able counterweights on her chest. Imagination abuzz with unwanted pictures, his face pinked to dark red and his cheeks brightened to crimson. Aya could feel Razer's core temperature skyrocketing. Vital signs spiked against the crook of her neck, and an interesting whine in the back of his throat. Was that a whimper?

"But from outside observation a hug is one's way to safely to display gentle gestures of affection and gratitude," Aya finished, she stood back to observe his reaction, "Why Red Lantern Razer you are starting to match Hal Jordan's skintone."

"_I know,_" Razer growled, hugging Aya a little tighter hoping if he hugged her enough she wouldn't notice why he was blushing.

"What is next on your itinerary?" Aya asked calmly not noticing the source of Razer's discomfort or safely not pointing it out.

"I . . ." he took a cool breath hoping his body temperature would go down, "I need a cold shower."

"Did I forget to express my gratitude?" Aya chirruped.

Razer still tingled from the hug. To say the days hadn't been crazy would be like saying Aya wasn't curious. The crew drove him to perform uncomfortable feats. His ears were still burning as if ready to pour steam. Hal seemed too lackadaisical for his own good. Kilowog picked all the wrong times to be the voice of reason. Razer his ingrained short fuse from Red Lantern boot camp wasn't winning him brownie points in the cooperation department.

. . . Yet the ship was now working smoothly.

. . . Everyone had quirks but worked as well as one living thing.

. . . He was more willing to go the distance for this crew than he was his previous commanding officers.

His face finally faded to its usual stark white. Razer's lips quirked into a small almost smile. He knew he did not fit in but that did not matter. The memories kept playing over and over in his head, cooling something he thought couldn't be healed. Not the worry he was the last of his kind. Not the loyalty he still held to his clan and wife. He at least made a friend. For that, he was happy to just be at peace even if it was only for a little while.


End file.
